Hogwarts University
by The MudDog
Summary: As a young, female professor at Hogwarts University, Hermione's got a reputation to keep, but that's hard when Harry and Ron turn up on her doorstep out of the blue. Ron's hoping to rekindle old flames; Harry's got far too many secrets; Sam's wand-work is abysmal and Hermione is just dying to help, and could Dean be gay? Love squares abound. Primarily [Hermione/Sam].
1. Preface

PREFACE

Hogwarts University for the Magically Minded (H.U.M.M.) was celebrating its bicentennial when it hired Miss Granger, though it had only been operating under that name for the past thirty of those years. Previously, it had been one "M" short: Hogwarts University for the Magical, but, when Albus Dumbledore had taken charge back in 1968, he'd opened admissions to muggle students as well and changed the name correspondingly, a revolutionary and still highly controversial decision. Dumbledore had never minded the criticism. As he'd argued in a thousand different interviews, always calmly stroking the tip of his beard as he spoke, the muggle world was still by-and-large unaware of the wizarding community's existence, and it was silly to estrange those who were already in the know. They could help bridge the gap, hide the holes, work the PR, and Dumbledore's successor as head of H.U.M.M. agreed in all respects; the more the two cultures could work together without conflict, the better for all.

Hermione, too, was an avid believer in the potential of integrated education, and, as a muggle-born, she thought it was highly likely that affirmative action was the only reason H.U.M.M. had hired her in the first place (as well as the peculiar interest that the man who'd interviewed her had seemed to have in her legs) because, at twenty-eight, she was far too young to be a professor by anybody's standards. Hermione had been made well aware of this fact every day for the past four years.

Now she was thirty-two, a rising star in the potions department, and everything she'd worked for was about to come crashing down around her ears.

For Ron, the crash had come long ago. He'd thought he knew where his life was going when he was twenty-three and holed up with Hermione in what was probably the cheapest flat in Norfolk. But Hermione had wanted to go back to school. Ron hadn't. They'd split, and he hadn't really found solid footing since, hadn't, in fact, ever managed to fully untie himself from the remaining knots of Hermione's heartstrings. Yesterday, he'd been evicted from his latest apartment, and, with half a case of beer, half a head of hope, and very little sense, he'd hopped the next train up to that castle in the mountains, the last place that he'd felt like he really knew where he was.

Harry, the great hero of their generation, had been hired right out of H.U.M.M. as an auror, and, while he'd maintained constant contact with his school friends through letters, phone calls and e-mails, he'd been too busy with big things of late to really drop by and chat much. Now, however, the situation was… complicated… and as soon as he realized he needed a place to hide out for Merlin-only-knew how long, a certain bushy-haired friend popped immediately to the forefront of his mind as if by a conjuring spell.

Harry came only one train behind Ron.

Across an ocean and half a continent, Sam Campbell had spent his freshman year at the American Academy of Witchcraft, hidden away in the complex rock structures and unexpected rivieras of the northern New Mexican desert, and he'd fully anticipated staying there for the next three years, but that'd been before he'd gotten the call from the stumbling police officer back in Kansas who couldn't seem to say the word "dead."

It'd been two days into the first semester of Sam's sophomore year and he'd been high on the buzz of new courses and old friends, but he knew as soon as the man had said, "I'm sorry," where the conversation was going to end. Mary had, after all, been sick for close to a decade, so it was less of a surprise and more of an inevitable bullet hole through his chest when his brain pieced together the officer's unspoken message of doom.

The plan had been in place since the second opinion had come in two years ago; Sam was to go to his great aunt across the Atlantic. He was nineteen, an adult in the eyes of the law, and technically he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, but Mary was dead, and so it wasn't about what Sam wanted anymore; it was about what _she'd_ wanted, and she'd wanted him to go to this British aunt. Sam had never met Mrs. Longbottom, but her grandson had come to visit a time or two when Sam was growing up, and so he wasn't as apprehensive as he might've been through the whole process of sorting out the final funeral bills, packing his bags, waving goodbye to the sun-kissed hue of his skin, and slouching onto the red-eye flight to Heathrow.

Dean Winchester was twenty-three and proud to say he had two things to his name: a G.E.D. and a give-'em-hell attitude. He also had a pain-in-the-ass dad who'd been rubbing him the wrong way for the past six months and was now just asking to be punched. Dean and John were a father-and-son team of muggles who were hip to the whole wizards and witches business, and they'd made it their goal to save as many sorry bastards (ignorant muggles) as they could from all that magical mumbo-jumbo: cursed objects, werewolves, vampires, hags, ladida, so on and so forth. But John was the ex-military type who couldn't stand to see Dean peeling away from the family unit as he matured, and, after a particularly vicious shouting match, they'd both agreed that it was time for Dean to get out for a while…

…Dean just hadn't known "out" meant _England_. And worse, _school_. British people and books… Hosanna!

So, it was on the same unassuming, rainy Wednesday that all five ended up on the Hogwarts grounds with not a clue in the world as to just how tangled up their lives were soon to become.

* * *

**Author Note: Hey y'all. This chapter was just to set up this AU, where all the characters are and so such. Later chapters will be longer, much less summary-like, and told more-so from a real POV. Also, in case it was unclear, this world is basically the Harry Potter world, not the Supernatural one, except there are a lot more muggles in this universe who know about and are involved in the workings of the magical world.  
**

**Hope people are as excited about this as I am! Please review if you have time. :)**


	2. Chapter 1: One Wet Wednesday

**Author Note: Heya. Didn't do this last chapter, so decided to get it outta the way now. First off, I don't own either H.P. or S.P.N. (Figured y'all know that, but there it is for what it's worth). Second off: Warnings! Yay! Sam and Dean are unrelated in this story, but there are gonna be mentions of slash, so if that bothers you, here's your chance to back out. Other than that, Dean, Sam, and I all swear a decent amount, though I'm tryna tone that down for this fic. I'm a tasteless American and apologize if I butcher British culture (dying to go to England but have never been as of yet). I don't plan to have anything graphic in either the violence or sex department, but there will probably be some of both (meaning nongraphic violence and sex). If I face-palm later and realize I forgot something, I'll include more warnings in future chapters.**

**Sorry for the long note, and on to the story!**

* * *

CHAPTER 1: ONE WET WEDNESDAY

In her living quarters deep in the castle, Hermione couldn't hear the soft fuzz of raindrops on stone, but she could feel it in the dampness of the walls, smell it in the earthiness of the floors, and she was taking the excuse to huddle up in her comfiest armchair with a thick ceramic mug of tea, a quilt, and her latest batch of essays to correct. She let Blondie and Joni Mitchell take turns on the radio and huffed at Harvey's deplorable grammar. All in all, it was a very normal, fairly comfortable Wednesday, but that was until somebody took it upon himself to crack her door down.

Alright, he didn't really crack it down, but in the midst of the soft, imagined rain noises and Joni's slow voice, it sure sounded like that. A quick succession of cringe-worthy raps against the thick oak boards, the rattling protests of the nails, and then a voice calling: "Hermione! Oy, Hermione! It's me!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. The voice did strike a few chords of familiarity, but how in the name of Merlin's beard was she supposed to know who "me" was without a bit more than that?

Still, she called back an, "I'm coming! Don't dent the wood," and kicked her blanket to the floor.

In woolen socks and sweats, she padded across the various mismatched rugs she'd laid down four years ago when she'd first moved in and tugged the heavy panel open a foot. Her eyes and mouth widened as she spotted the redheaded face grinning a bit sheepishly down at her, and she heaved the door open the rest of the way.

"Ron," she said, tilting her head with a smile that was both amused and bemused, "What are you doing here?"

Ron's grin slanted towards the sheepish side as he took Hermione's unspoken invitation to come inside. "Er… I was, uh… kicked out of my flat," he admitted with a shrug of his thin, rain-dampened shoulders. He was pretending to survey the room, peering at Hermione through his peripheral vision to try and gauge her reaction.

"And you need a place to stay," Hermione concluded. She crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at him. "Is that it?"

Ron shrugged again and smiled again, at the deep crimson of the rug this time. "That's about the size of it. I was hoping I could, you know, hole up here for a week or two until I can find a new job, new place."

"Well, strictly speaking that's against the rules," she started, smiling at Ron's corresponding shuffle, "but God knows you and Harry beat down my rule-abiding side years ago, and it's been months since we talked."

Ron glanced up from the carpet as his shoulders pulled out of their slouch, and, after a second's hesitation, he said, "So I can stay?"

"Three weeks," Hermione told him with a sternly upheld finger, "You can stay for three weeks and after that I'm sending you to the pound, job or not."

The grin wormed its way back across Ron's firestorm of freckles. "You're the man, Hermione," he said, clapping her on the back as he stepped to the door once again, "I'll go get my stuff."

"Woman," Hermione corrected with a fond scowl at the closing door. How could Ron of all people forget that?

…

Outside in the fog-fucked world of rain, Dean glared at the gothic monstrosity rising from the grass, mud, and mist, scowled deeply at the Latin inscription carved over the entryway. Seriously, who did these people think they were? Was wearing robes half the time and waving little sticks of wood not enough for them? They had to live in a goddamn castle, too? Not like he had anything against your common witch, but he'd never been a big fan of all the whimsical shit surrounding the magical world… and being in England only made it that much worse, that much more old-fashioned and aristocratic. Give him exhaust fumes and barbeque any day; here it was just… too wet.

He shot the wrought-iron gateway the finger, hoisted his duffel higher on his shoulder, and trudged through the squelching grass towards the rock prison that awaited him higher on the slope. It stared over his head from a thousand indifferent windows, rejecting his hatred, and that only pissed Dean off all the more. He didn't belong here and the goddamn castle knew it, but it wasn't like misery in marriage was anything new, and Dean had to go in even if the fucking thing was gonna send ten tons of rock crashing down on his head as soon as he set the first foot inside.

Then again, since when exactly had Dean's life been a joy ride? Ha…Since never. Fuckin' A, man, but what can a guy do? So in he went.

The door shut behind him of its own accord, making Dean mutter a few meaningless (but still fairly impolite) phrases under his breath. He was supposed to go talk to this tool named Percy Weasley who was apparently some sort of somebody in the school's bureaucracy, but Dean'd be damned if anyone he'd talked to so far had heard of the guy. The address on the sheet he'd snatched from the printer back at JFK before sprinting to his departure gate (no surprise, he'd been cutting his timing tighter than a leotard) listed the dude's office as room 38 on the fourth floor, but when Dean showed up, this turned out to be a bathroom. At least, it was labeled "Lady's Lounge" in flaking lavender letters, so Dean assumed that's what it was.

With a glower at the door, he dumped his duffel against the wall and wrestled his cell phone out of a very wet and very resistant jacket pocket.

Except there was no reception… of course.

Fucking magical bastards.

Dean was psyching himself up to go knock at room 36 and demand some answers (or at least some Advil to get rid of the massive headache this whole thing was giving him), when the door to the Lady's Lounge whipped open and smooshed him flat against the corridor wall.

"Oh, shit!" the bastard who'd done it said, "Sorry."

Immediately, the door was dragged back so that Dean could breathe again, and the guy who'd come through it and caused this whole mess in the first place repeated his apology as fingers of pink crawled up his cheeks. "Sorry."

Dean rubbed at his recently-crushed torso and shot the dude a good-natured frown. At least, it was good-natured until he realized the fucker had a solid three inches on him, at which point it became the tiniest bit resentful. Dean didn't like feeling short. He was six foot one, and guys who were six foot one and as amazingly manly as Dean were _not_ supposed to be made to feel short. Still, he kept the smile in his voice as he said, "It's cool, man. It's what I deserve for lurking behind bathroom doors."

The corner of the tall guy's mouth crinkled up. "True that," he said with an amused crease forming across the bridge of his nose, "And you were kinda lurking, weren't you."

"That's me. First class lurker," Dean acknowledged, pushing off the smooth stone of the wall as he realized that he might have found a guide dog of sorts. "Actually, though, I'm looking for this administrative dude… uh…" He consulted his crumpled reference sheet. "Percy Weasley."

"Oh yeah," the tall guy nodded, and he hooked a thumb back over his shoulder, "Just talked to him. He's in there."

"What? The women's bathroom?" Dean's eyebrows made a run up his forehead and then came crimping back down as something crossed his mind. "On that note," he pressed, "the fuck were _you_ doing in the women's bathroom?"

"I'm flat chested," the guy said, stone-faced.

"Dude," Dean snorted, "You're, like, seven feet tall; even my blind aunt wouldn't buy that."

The guy's mouth crooked up again, and he didn't bother to push the matter. "That's his office," he explained, "Nobody got around to re-labeling the door's all."

"Huh," Dean said. "Weird."

The tall kid snorted. "Don't you mean 'charming?'"

"Nope. Don't really think I do."

Another smile and a little jog of his eyebrows in acknowledgment, and the guy was stepping away down the corridor, slinging his backpack up to settle between his shoulders. Against his height and breadth, the scruffy bag looked like it should belong to a six-year-old girl, like it was a toy, and the thought made Dean's lips quirk up in a totally ridiculous way.

"Thanks, buddy," he hollered after the retreating form.

"Sure thing," the guy called back, and then he was gone through some passage Dean couldn't see.

It was only after that, as Dean huffed into the Lady's Lounge (which, yes, was actually the relegated office space of a seriously snappy and flustered Percy Weasley), that Dean realized the guy who'd slammed the door into him had had an American accent. Huh… Maybe he wasn't quite as far from home as he'd thought.

Dean decided to find that idea comforting.

…

Harry'd done himself up in a glamour spell, but he still chose to wait until the only light was that diffused through mist by moon-shine and torch-fire before he sped across the grounds into the castle. Once within the embrace of wood, iron, and stone, his sneakers became the traitors, leaving telltale trails of mud down the hallways, and he had to flick his wand in a constant tic in order to erase all the evidence without slowing down. Not only was there the usual buzz of fame to dodge, but this time going incognito was actually a necessity. Bloody fucking nuisance, but a definite necessity.

With the castle mostly asleep, and Harry's spell-work to deter the few roaming night-owls, he made it to his destination in less than ten minutes. The torches here were out, and it was almost as dark as under the cover of the Forbidden Forest, but that hadn't bothered Harry in years; he'd enhanced his night vision for the trip, and the door's scabbed wood was as clear in the blackness as a slide under a microscope. Placing his wand against the handle, he recited the spell in his head, and then lowered it back to his side.

It was only a minute later that the door creaked open, just an inch, and a shadowed brown eye peered through.

"Harry?" a familiar voice inquired, edging on a yawn.

Hermione's confusion flummoxed him for a split second before he remembered the glamour spell, and a smile split his face in relief.

"Yeah, it's me. Hey, Hermione."

"Nice beard," she mumbled, eyelids already sinking downwards again, "Did you and Ron plan this?"

"Plan what?" Harry asked quietly as he darted a look to either side, and then, without waiting for a reply, added, "Can we talk about this inside?"

Hermione's only response was to yawn and step back from the door so that Harry could push it the rest of the way open and slip through.

"Plan showing up together," she finished, smiling at Harry now that he'd dropped the glamour and she could make out the familiar shadows his glasses painted across his cheek bones.

"Ron's here?" Harry asked. He tucked his wand into his robes and tossed his traveling cloak onto the nearest chair. "Since when?"

"I'll take that as a no," Hermione murmured as she attempted to get a good read on Harry's health. He'd seemed bonier the last few times they'd chatted, not that he hadn't always been bony, but she thought that it had become something more. Unfortunately, the warm glow of her wand tip wasn't bright enough to make a detailed study, and she didn't want to really light up the room for fear of waking Ron, so, giving up and answering Harry's question instead, she said, "He's been here since early afternoon."

"Hmm," Harry mumbled. He'd taken a chair and Hermione could make out the nervous up and down jarring of his right knee.

She sighed. Why couldn't men ever simply come out and say things? "What's wrong, Harry?"

"What? Oh, nothing."

She sighed again and rubbed the dream-fog from her eyes. "Don't be a moron. You didn't come here in the middle of the night to putter about in my kitchen, and if you did then I'm going to hex you so badly you walk funny for a week, so spit it out."

Harry managed a small smile at that. Hermione, by some mysterious power of her own, was always able to make him feel like the same clueless freshman he'd been when he'd first stepped onto the Hogwarts grounds fourteen years ago. "It's work," he said at last. "It's… not good, and I need… a place…" He let the words fade out and looked up at her hopefully. She was smart. She knew what he wanted.

Another sigh puffed out of the semi-darkness. "You need a place to stay. To hide," Hermione stated with resignation. There was only the tiniest of pauses before this was followed by, "Yes, alright. Though I honestly can't believe you and Ron didn't plan this." Harry could hear the soft scrub of skin on skin as she rubbed her eyes again. "Are you two trying to get me sacked?" she went on in an only infinitesimally accusatory voice, "Because you know this isn't allowed, right?"

"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled with his eyes on the tabletop. He was, but that didn't mean he was going to reconsider taking her up on her offer. It wasn't like any time before; he _needed_ a place to hide, and he knew Hermione could give him that. It's why he'd come.

Hermione sighed into the seat next to him and then reached out to give him a quick hug. "You're an idiot," she said, "but I'm glad you're here."

Harry smiled for real then. He was glad, too.


	3. Chapter 2: One is Silver

CHAPTER 2: ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER GOLD

Harry woke up at 5:30. He always woke up at 5:30. Like every basic training routine from the Ministry's auror boot camp, it was written in blood somewhere deep down in the twistiest twists of his cerebellum, and so, each day since he'd signed his name on that dotted line and handed over his wand to be weighed and recorded, he lived by the clock.

Needless to say, Hermione and Ron were still asleep: Hermione somewhere upstairs, Ron twenty-or-so feet from Harry's own makeshift bed, spread-eagle on an old quilt. He was covered in a heap of unwashed jackets and snoring loud enough to crack the walls of Buckingham Palace. Some half-forgotten, schoolboy urge rose in Harry at the sight (or maybe at the sound), and he was sorely tempted to walk over and give Ron a good kick… but he restrained himself. Waking Ron would solidly ruin Harry's morning plans, and he really didn't have the time to waste. Who knew when he'd get another perfect hour of uninterrupted darkness?

So — momentarily postponing his desire to knock Ron silly — Harry swallowed back the worst of the staleness on his tongue, shook his cloak off the chair where he'd left it the night before, and tip-toed out of the dark room into the equally dark (though much colder) corridor beyond. His destination? The Forbidden Forest.

He had a rendezvous to make.

…

Two hours later and three floors away, Sam was contemplating his deep resentment of H.U.M.M.'s core requirements. The fact that Charms was a mandatory course was killing him… Transfiguration, too… _and_ Defense Against the Dark Arts for that matter. Couldn't there be more stuff like Potions and Divination… stuff that didn't require words and wands? Sam had never been big on wands. He felt better about magic that came directly from himself — his "inner power" or some other hippy crap. You know, stuff that didn't require a dumb little stick as a go-between. 'Cause, for whatever reason, those dumb little sticks had never really warmed up to Sam, always seemed to give him a crap-load of grief that they never gave anybody else. (He still remembered the eighth-grade quesadilla incident, and he wished he didn't). On top of that, everybody knew that the American educational system lagged behind the general crowd, and he'd never been all that good back in the U.S. (at least when it came to wand-work), which meant he wasn't going to be _any_ good here in England. All in all, it was situation normal… which he meant in the World War II way.

That aside, Sam was a dedicated student, and — despite his loud and frequent mental groans — he pushed through the heavy wooden door to the Charm's lecture hall three minutes ahead of schedule. There were already a decent number of students there, mostly half-asleep ('cause, whatever the clock said, it was way too early to be up), but there nonetheless. Sam joined the throng with a yawn, forcing himself not to select a seat at the very, _very_ back. Two rows from the door, though; that was okay. And if he slouched way down… Well… that was okay, too, right? He wasn't _really_ hiding. He was there after all, wasn't he?

And actually, "there" wasn't such a bad place to be (or wouldn't have been if he didn't suck so much). The hall's walls, at least, were beautiful, each stone a slightly different hue of earthy gray, so that together they created this formidable, but still somehow homey, patchwork of rock. As a great appreciator of architecture, Sam took the time to admire how smoothly the blocks fit together, so flush, in fact, that he fantasized they must've come from the same quarry… one big family of stone, relocated and reunited many miles away from their homeland, so that now they were so grateful to be back together they were grasping at each other with all the strength their rocky arms could muster and would never ever let go. It was a nice thought. Probably not true, he relented, but nice.

Then the professor coughed, a sound amplified by the projection spell he had going, and Sam was dragged back down into his desk and the reality of his situation… which was not-so-nice. Charms. Fan-fucking-tastic.

The issues began almost immediately. Silent summoning spells. Sam listened with a nearly painful degree of attention as the professor explained the theory behind all magic that involved the relocation of physical material, which Sam understood just fine. A small part of him hoped that maybe, for whatever reason — new school, new teacher, new year, or simply the right combination of pants, shoes, and shirt — this would be the day. This would be the day where suddenly his long history of failure fell away and revealed the real, kick-ass Sam Campbell underneath!

Except not.

Theory he could do, but five minutes into the relegated practice time, it became apparent that he was just as terrible in England as he had been back in New Mexico. The pin cushion he was supposed to be summoning glared at him across the intervening yards like some extremely ornery sea urchin and refused to do more than skid in small circles around the tabletop. The plump, Indian girl next to him (who had succeeded on her third try) had begun giving him sympathetic looks half-a-minute back, and Sam could tell she was working up to the big question.

"Excuse me…" Yep. Here it was. "…Would you like some help?"

Much as he griped about it (about being treated like an overgrown man-child, that was), yes, Sam would like some help, so he shot her his best I-peed-the-rug puppy smile, and said, "Yeah. Yeah, help would be great. Thanks. I have a lifelong rap-sheet of seriously screwing up at this type of thing."

The girl perked up with an answering curve of her lips, which caused her dark golden chipmunk cheeks to puff out, and said, "Well, I can't promise I'll be able to fix a lifetime of screwing up, but I can try to give some pointers."

"Go ahead," Sam nodded, attention fixed on her as if she was about to deliver the eleventh commandment, "I mean, nothing can make it worse, right?"

"Alright," she smiled, a bit shy now that she had the podium, "Well, from what I saw you're a bit tight in the wrist."

"And you're thinking too hard," a new voice broke in. Also female. When Sam and the Indian girl looked up, she smiled to soften the blow, pushing hair that was spider-web thin and sun-on-snow pale back behind her ears.

Sam made a mock suspicious face. "How can you tell what I'm thinking?"

The girl shrugged and graced them with another broad smile. "It looked like you were going into labor," she said.

The Indian girl laughed, and added, "I suppose it kind of did."

Sam winced. "Fair enough," he said, thoroughly kicked, "So, how do I think… less hard?"

"Question of the century," the blond girl sighed.

"Maybe focus more on the general goal rather than the specifics of what you're doing?" the Indian girl suggested.

"And don't scare the pin cushion off with angry thoughts," the blonde hopped back in.

Sam raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "Alright. Keeping all that in mind, here goes nothing."

The Indian girl (whose name he later learned was Prisha) said that she thought the pin cushion made a more directed shuffle this time, but Sam thought that was probably the optimistic-to-the-point-of-flat-out-lying view of the situation. Fact was, he still sucked ass, and he didn't improve in the next forty minutes, though he did attract a lot of sympathetic looks and eagerly-dropped tips from the surrounding girls, and slightly more exasperated looks and reluctantly-given advice from the surrounding males. The professor didn't appreciate the feeding ball that had formed, and he came over to break it up and give Sam a look that said, "I've seen your kind before and have little hope for your revival, but for now I shall put up with your presence in my class." It was a look Sam was used to.

But thank the fucking lord he had Divination next, and Divination was another matter entirely. Sam rocked at divination. Forget the tea leaves and the crystal balls; as soon as he scaled the ladder into the smoke-warmed loft, air ripe with incense and sweat, his inner psychic awoke from its light slumber. It was an odd sensation, but one Sam had become accustomed to over the years, his own self diffusing out into the thick air and other things beginning to diffuse in to fill the vacated hotel rooms in his mind.

For instance, the kid to his right was worrying about how stupid he was going to look in a couple of minutes. He didn't want the señoritas to see him like that. The two girls behind him were only in this class for the credits and firmly believed that divining the future was one big hoax. And the professor would make a dramatic entrance in exactly… 12.3 seconds.

And counting… three seconds now… two… one…

"Welcome, class!"

The spider-armed woman burst from behind a curtain with an accompanying cloud of lavender smoke, which pooled around her feet like an obedient dog as she strode forward into the cleared semicircle at the front of the room. Sam thought she looked a bit unstable (in more ways than one); she probably shouldn't've been wearing heeled boots, but, then again, that was just an opinion. Behind thick, round glasses, her eyes swelled huge and orb-like. Other than that, however, she was as bony as bony could be, and every time she took a tottering step on her heels, he had to prevent himself from wincing. She was gonna fall over and crack in half any second now. Except, no… he knew she wouldn't actually because he was a psychic, and if something disastrous like that was about to happen, he would've sensed it by now.

"Good morning, good morning," the woman continued. "I am Professor Trelawney, great-great-granddaughter of Cassandra Trelawney, to whom I hope your History of Magic Teacher has had the presence of mind to introduce you." The woman smiled over their heads as if in fond remembrance, though Sam was sure she hadn't been born at the time of the famous Seer's death. She stayed that way for a moment, the students eyeing her awkwardly. Then, as if coming back to herself, Trelawney continued airily, "Not to discredit the value of other subjects, of course, but they are all rather ephemeral and nit-picky in comparison to the vast and eternal oceans of time and the mind."

As she spoke, Sam settled into one of the too-small chairs that surrounded the professor's semicircle. The thin wire backing looked more like lace than metal, and, even though his psychic abilities assured him it wouldn't, common sense told him the chair was not gonna be able to hold up the full two-hundred and twenty pounds that made up his body. He ended up perching gingerly on the edge, leaning some of his weight onto the equally fairy-thin table next to him.

Someone else sat down across from him, but Sam was caught up on the professor's tottering steps and dramatically gesturing arms, and he didn't turn to see who. The guy had other plans.

"Hey," he said, leaning forward to grab Sam's attention. "Is this the first time this class is meeting?"

He sounded skeptical, and Sam twisted his head to find that it was the same guy he'd met yesterday in the hallway, the fellow American whose sense of fashion came straight from the backwater parts of the country where people were stuck twenty years behind the times.

"Hey," Sam smiled, surprised. Not the type of guy he'd thought to find in Divination. "Yeah, it is actually. Budget cuts happened last year, and they weren't sure they were gonna have funding to keep the department as large as it used to be, so the professors were all off fighting some administrative battle, but they're back now, and, yeah, long story short, this is the first time we're meeting."

"Cool," the guy said. "Though I don't know why the fuck I'm here. I need to go talk to the asshole who put me in this class."

"Not a believer?" Sam smirked. He'd met a lot.

The guy shrugged. "What, are you? Although that's not really what I meant. I meant I'm here to learn about magical creatures mostly, and de-hexing things without having to use goddamn wands or whatever. I'm not a wizard, so what fucking good could this possibly do me, bat-ass crazy or not?"

"Ahh…" Sam smiled with a nod, "one of the ever elusive muggles. It never hurts to learn theory though, man."

"What theory?" the guy snorted. "D'you see that whacked-out old broad?" He inclined his head not-so-subtly towards Professor Trelawney. "Lady wouldn't be able to sense if the goddamn Enterprise was about to crash through the tower wall, so sorry, pal, but I don't think she's gonna be much good in teaching me the theory of jack-squat."

Sam felt his smile broaden. For sure the dude wasn't what anybody'd call polite, but Sam was beginning to share his doubts about the professor. (She'd begun to spin futures for a few of the students in the front row, and from the things she was saying, Sam was pretty sure it was all coming out of her own loopy brain, not theirs.)

"I'll grant you she's a little bit… odd," he acknowledged with a tip of his head, "but that doesn't mean Divination as a whole is a load of trash. You gotta have a bit o' faith."

"What, you seriously believe in that hippy-dippy crap?"

"Oh yeah, man," he grinned, "I'm all hippy, and I can prove it, too."

"Shut up. You cannot."

"Can too."

The other guy's challenging chin jut was all the invitation Sam needed. He closed his eyes and let his self drift away again. The senses came faster this time, almost as if they were seeking him out. Skeptical, cocky, but also nervous about something, and very, very alert. The dude's thoughts were too confusing right now for Sam to get a clear read on, though, so he commanded, "Think about something specific."

Sam got a brief flash of heat and fear, but that was only for a split second before the thought waves settled into the contemplation of a burger... perhaps worship was a better word. Sam rolled his eyes. "Food, really? Could you be any less original?"

"No way," the guy sneered, hazel eyes narrowing. "That was a guess. What type of food?"

"A hamburger," Sam told him with a challenging smirk of his own, "heavy on the onions."

"No fucking way," the guy said, but this time his eyes had gone wide and he was shaking his head. "That's just wrong."

"I'm psychic," Sam explained, feeling more smug than he probably should've, but he liked a bit of flash sometimes; was that a crime? "It has its perks."

"Dude, that is beyond creepy."

"What, you don't think it's cool at all?"

He scowled. "Can you, like, tell what I'm thinking all the time?"

"Oh, come on, no. I have to actively try, and I do have some respect for people's privacy; I don't listen in on all their personal shit." He shrugged. "Even if I did, I'm not really that good. Thoughts are complicated."

"What were you sensing before I started thinking about the burger?" the guy pressed, clearly not satisfied.

"Basically that you're a dick," Sam grinned. "But," he added, holding up a playful finger, "you were also feeling… I don't know… cautious… about something. You seemed kinda, like, tense. Like, nervous and excited at the same time." Sam folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. "But that's all I got. Most of the time it's like that: raises more questions than it answers."

"Huh," was all the other guy managed to say before they were interrupted by the professor.

"Excuse me," she said, rather pointedly, although she wasn't looking at them, "But I appreciate silence in my classroom. Speech interferes with the still waters of the mind."

Sam's table partner snorted. "In that case you think she might consider shutting her cakehole once in a while," he muttered.

Professor Trelawney coughed in a rather undignified manner, and Sam was sure she'd heard. He pressed his lips together to prevent himself from grimacing… or smiling… He couldn't be sure which.

"I'm Sam," he murmured in a low voice, keeping his body turned towards the professor, but speaking across the table to the American guy. "What's your name?"

"Dean," the guy provided, "Your psychic powers couldn't pull that one out of my brain?"

Sam shrugged. "Don't know," he said, "Didn't try. Though if you're open to brain invasion, let me know, and I won't bother asking in the future until I've exhausted my own interrogative abilities."

"Ew. No. Trust me, you don't wanna be in my head."

Sam snorted. "I'll take your word for it."

"'Cause it's, like, naked chicks twenty-four-seven," Dean went on, "and pie. And when those two things come together it can get pretty wild."

"You're weird."

"Don't I know it."

…

Hermione woke up to a muffled scratching at the door. Praying that Ron would have the sense not to answer it, she stuffed her hair back from her face and hurried down the stairs, feet getting chills from the icy hide of the naked flagstones.

As it turned out, she needn't have worried about Ron. He was still snoring up a storm, and she nearly tripped over him in her scuffle towards the door because, for some mysterious reason of his own, the moron had disguised himself in a pile of smelly clothing.

Therefore, it was with a slight scowl that Hermione cracked back the oak panel to peer out into the now brightly lit hallway.

An owl hopped in. Politely, it raised its leg and stared up at its recipient with very large and very orange eyes. In no un-plain terms, the owl's expression said, "Please don't waste my time."

Hermione didn't. She bent down and untied the bit of rolled paper with sleep-clumsy fingers, and then straightened again to read it.

It was quite to-the-point. "Prof. Granger, Please come to my office the moment you receive this message. Sincerely, Prof. Crouch."

Hermione scowled and shook off any thoughts she'd had about cooking eggs and giving Ron some much-needed talking down. It looked like she'd be going to see the insufferable Mr. Crouch instead, which was really the last thing she wanted to be doing with her morning. But she didn't have much of a choice. Sighing, she tossed aside the letter, thanked the owl, and then humphed back up the frigid staircase to get changed for her upcoming tête-à-tête.

Mr. Crouch, conniving monster that he was, had long ago secured a fine set of rooms for himself in the divination tower… And then proceeded to make them distinctly un-fine. He'd removed most of the furniture, and the ice from his heart had mixed with the darkness of his personality to thoroughly demoralize the usually warm-looking and comfortable stone walls that were ubiquitous in the castle. Now the rooms were just… so Crouch-like. Hermione had to hold back a shudder as she entered.

There was no preamble. As soon as the door had whimpered closed, Crouch was saying, "I need you to cover for McConelly, who is on maternity leave, and Jameson, who met with the wrong end of a Blast-Ended Skrewt." Was there a right end? "It will be at least a month." He barely glanced up at her during his monologue, and his voice seeped out goopy, gray indifference. It pooled in the air between them like a solid wall.

Hermione's brain, for its part, throbbed with indignation. Two sets of classes on top of her own? It was virtually impossible, and Crouch knew that, had devised it specifically to drive her out because she was young and female and brilliant, and he _hated_ that. She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd had the Skrewt imported just for this purpose. Ha! She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd knocked up Professor McConelly!

But Hermione had always been able to surmount the impossible before, and she wasn't going to let some gray-mustached old codger — however odious — stop her now.

So she said, "I'll need their schedules and lecture notes. Please have them sent to my rooms," and, when Mr. Crouch nodded without looking up from his papers, spun and stormed out in a silent typhoon.

…

Ron had been anticipating Hermione's return with distinct apprehension.

He knew she was stressed (because Hermione was always stressed), and he was eager to help. Perhaps his reasons were more selfish than altruistic, as he'd had bad experiences with getting snapped at and stepped on by a stressed Hermione, but the overall intention was still good. Anyway, he figured that his vaguely formed, big-picture goals would go over a pound or two more smoothly if he could get a nice, book-happy Hermione instead.

But he didn't really know Merlin's left foot about stress reduction, and it seemed more likely than not that he was just going to end up fucking himself over worse than he already had by turning up wet and broke on her doorstep. He'd considered cooking something, but quickly figured that that would most likely result in the added cost of a hazardous waste removal team (which could hardly count as a step forward in Operation Hermione). He'd also thought about cleaning up a bit, but, then again, Hermione was so picky about how everything was arranged that, with Ron's luck, that would only heighten her stress.

In fact, Ron had a feeling that anything he did outside of sitting in place with his mouth shut and his hands safely in his lap would probably heighten Hermione's stress. His mere presence was undoubtedly enough by its sweet little lonesome.

When she finally did creak back through the heavy oak door, Ron's internal demons had driven his already pale skin three shades whiter, and he felt the tiniest bit faint.

Hermione, who, yes, was visibly a good deal more stressed, frowned at him and said, "Ron, are you sick? You look like a ghost just walked through you."

"What?" said Ron, shocking himself out of his own aggravating mental track (which had bitten its tail and become a loop a good ten minutes back). Noticing Hermione and the stressed face, he swallowed and put on a very un-comforting-looking wafer of a smile. "I'm great. How are you?" —bloody stupid thing to say.

Hermione gave him a funny, slightly scowlish look, and dropped into the armchair across from him.

"Stressed," she said, which Ron knew. It was so blatant in the tight purse of her lips and the persistent crease of her forehead that even Crabbe and Goyle probably could've seen it.

Ron decided to carry on, though. "Why's 'at?"

Hermione scrunched her eyes shut, which was a shame because Ron loved her eyes, always soft brown, but not stupid soft. Intelligent and alert. He'd never understood how her eyes were possible. Maybe they weren't. Maybe it was magic.

Hermione was immune to Ron's silent adoration. "It's work," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand as her eyelids drooped back open. "I have to stand in for two other professors and I'm already swamped by my own classes. But I can't say 'no' because…" Rather than elaborating, she just shook her head and held up her hands as if it were obvious. It wasn't, not to Ron at least, but he nodded anyway.

Hermione shook her head again and then puttered back to her feet. "I should finish up my stack of essays to grade," she sighed, "No time to waste now."

"Alright," Ron said, though it wasn't really. He felt like a piece of furniture that did not mesh with the room; like all the other furniture was looking at him and making snide comments to their furniture mates: "Ugh… who's that guy?" But all Ron said was, "I'll be here," in a voice that Hermione, who was already halfway up the stairs, would've needed an extendable ear to hear.

He was surprised, therefore, when not ten minutes later her voice echoed down the staircase with the clear intent of finding none other than himself. "Ron!" she called, "Harry's at the door. Can you let him in?"

Harry? What was Harry doing there? And how had Hermione known that? Nobody had knocked. But then again, both of his friends were far better at magic and commonplace silent communication than Ron had ever been, so he didn't doubt they had their ways. He didn't voice any of his questions, though; he simply shook his head and hollered back, "Yeah, I got it!" as he groaned upright and tottered over the rugs to the entrance.

However, when he undid the lock and pulled back the panel, it wasn't Harry on the other side; it was a shorter, fatter man with a fluffy brown beard and watery, blue-gray eyes. The man was dressed in drab and unremarkable robes, which were covered here and there with bits of moss, drying dirt, and crystalline strands that looked suspiciously like spider webs to Ron's well-trained eye. He shuddered inwardly.

"Er… Hello," he said, "Can I help you?"

The man's face scrunched up on one side like Ron had just slapped him with some sort of tasteless joke, and then the muscles relaxed again in apparent comprehension. "Ah," said the fat man as his lips tugged into a half-mouthed smile. "Hey, Ron; it's Harry." He patted his chub-heavy chest with an apologetic, "Glamour," in explanation, before pushing Ron's shoulder aside so he could get into the room. Only once the door was shut did he tap himself over the forehead with the phoenix-core wand and let the glamour wash away. Layers of fat bubbled into the air. The beard shed itself in a windfall of sparks, and blue irises mossed into weary green as Harry's torso lengthened. Within half a minute, he was full Harry again. The only thing that remained of the fat man were the robes, which were still shabby and covered in the contents of Mother Nature's rubbish bin.

"You've gotten a fair bit better with a wand, mate," Ron nodded at him, trying to keep the tiny stab of resentment in his stomach from escaping with his voice.

"Thanks," Harry sighed. He dropped his cloak onto the same chair as the night before and then dropped himself beside it. "Hasn't helped my natural appearance, though."

Ron snorted. "Yeah," he agreed with a small jog of his eyebrows as he returned to his armchair, "It looks like you had a close call with a vampire."

"Something like," Harry smiled, reaching up to rub some of the blood back into his cheeks, "Work's not easy."

"That's why I choose to remain unemployed."

Harry laughed. "Never knew it was a choice," he said.

"Eh, you know," Ron shrugged, though not even he knew what that was supposed to mean. It was a small nothing, a change of topic. "So what's up with you? Why're you here on a day as bloody awful as this one?"

"Er…" Harry chuckled nervously, "Work. It's always work; our only holiday is over Christmas. Why're _you_ here? I saw you last night when I came in, but Hermione didn't tell me much."

"You stayed over last night?" Ron asked, stunned. He scowled then and raised his voice as he stuck on, "Hermione really _is_ keeping tight-lipped about all this," hoping it'd make it up the stairway. He dropped his voice again and admitted, "I'm here 'cause I can't keep up with the rent anymore, so I'm leeching for the moment, just until I can find a new job."

Harry grinned at him in a tired way. "Well, I hate to smile over your misfortune, but you have to admit it's kind of funny that we're all here again. You know... living together, at Hogwarts, like we're still twenty."

Ron snorted. "No, go ahead. Laugh it up. It'll all be _real _bloody funny until Hermione starts breathing fire. She wasn't expecting guests."

"She'll warm up to it," Harry assured him. "Give her a chance."

Ron hoped Harry meant more by that than he was saying. Warming up to it would be nice, but Ron would really rather that she warm up to him, and then heat up, and then boil over… because he wanted back in, and if he only had three weeks to get there, he was going to need to turn the flames on high.


	4. Chapter 3: Drugs, Potions, Plants & Food

**Hey y'all! As always, I apologize for how frickin long it takes me to tap these things out. (If you read any of my other stories, you know the struggle). That said, I have no intention of giving up on this story; I have large, overarching plot goals for it, so that, at least, is good. I also want to apologize if I've misrepresented the British higher learning system; I'm only really familiar with the one we've got here in the U.S. and so H.U.M.M. is modeled after the American way (meaning broken up into departments with core and major requirements and courses divided into the 100, 200 and 300 levels). If anyone would like to enlighten me as to how the British or international system (if there is one) works, I'd appreciate it a lot (I'm always curious about that type of thing), but I'm going to stick with my native structure for this story.**

**If you spot typos or inconsistencies, let me know so I can fix them please :)**

**Finally, thank you so much if you've followed, favorited or reviewed! Y'all are awesome, and I hope you like the chapter.**

* * *

CHAPTER 3: DRUGS, POTIONS, PLANTS AND FOOD

Harry arrived at the edge of the Forbidden Forest at 5:48 the next morning, glamour firmly in place, the same ratty cloak nestled close around his limbs. Dew soaked through the thin mesh of his sneakers, and, despite the darkness, the thick, white ropes of Harry's breath were still visible as they steamed out into the greater body of mist, which carried the sweet and meaty scent of the wood stoves in the castle kitchens.

With three layers of clothing and his hands stuffed deep into robe pockets, only his face came into direct contact with the frigid air, but it still made his lungs hitch. So bloody fucking cold. A damp hope swirled in his mind that it would be warmer in the forest with the trees to act as a windshield. It wasn't, though. If anything, it was colder, what with the condensation slumping off the branches every few seconds to land on his head in heavy, brain-freezing drops. Harry spared a moment to glare upwards at the canopy as he dodged around the trunks; he couldn't actually see it given how all but the lowest boughs were shrouded in mist and darkness, but he knew it was there, and _it_ knew _he_ was there. They had a tenuous relationship at best, but, in spite of this frosty welcome, on Harry marched, until he was buried half-a-mile deep in the forest's ancient, sprawling vein-work.

Then he stopped, the same place he'd been yesterday, he was pretty sure, but he still tapped his wand against the thick trunk of the nearest tree to check. Sure enough, the moment the holly tip contacted the bark, a symbol flared up hot and red beneath it — two overlapping X's seemingly engraved in fire.

Harry's face tightened, not from cold this time or even from the wet, but from a simmering revulsion that'd been stewing away beneath his skull for the past two years. Everything about this job reeked. It reeked worse than the old cage of Hedwig's that he kept tucked away in a closet back at his London flat (because he couldn't quite bring himself to throw it out), and every day that passed, the smell only got worse.

"You're early," came a woman's voice, powdered with amusement as its owner slipped out between a pair of trees, roughly four meters from Harry's station. The woman, Mary, was constructed like a brick, middle-aged and graying, but clearly still in shape — ox shape, not hourglass shape.

"I walk fast," Harry said coolly before moving on to matters of business. "Is Jared satisfied?"

"Mmh," said Mary. She took her sweet time about responding as she strolled around and examined the various trees, a thick hand laid on a trunk here, a brush of fingers there. Harry highly doubted she was actually finding anything of interest; she just enjoyed testing her power over him. How long could little Harry stay still and silent? Let's put him in a jar and find out — after all, he's only saved the world seven bloody times! Shouldn't that have won him some small, sad piece of respect? Even with these people? But evidently it didn't.

"He is," Mary continued as if she were oblivious to the angry froth slamming against the back of Harry's throat, "but his cousin's not. Paranoid." She shrugged and then turned her light-brown eyes back on Harry. "It'll do, though. Jared will convince him."

"Good," Harry said, wondering when he'd started considering this kind of news anything less than awful. "So am I done here?"

The woman turned from where she'd been picking at an offending patch of moss on one of the trunks. Her eyebrows slanted high. "No. No, definitely not." She seemed genuinely surprised that he'd ever have even considered that. "You're going to be our fence."

"What?!"

"Well... it seems you have a place to stay here, and I have to admit that your glamour is an impressive piece of work. Good job there, Harry. So Jared decided it would be unnecessarily risky to put another man in place when he's already got one so well situated. I agree. It makes perfect sense for you to be the fence."

Harry could feel his jawbone turning to iron. "No."

Mary smiled at him in a vaguely sad way, which Harry found extremely condescending. "Dear, we've been through this before."

"It's my old school. You can't ask me to do that."

"You're only selling to willing participants," Mary pointed out.

Harry scoffed. "Yeah. But how willing were they the first time?"

"That's not your problem, Harry," she said, empathetic smile still in place. "By the time you come into the picture, they're asking for it; you're just meeting the demand."

"It must be nice to be able to think about it all so bloody clinically," he spat back at her, rejecting her sympathy, "I'm afraid I can't when we're the ones who _created_ the damn demand. It's fucked up, and you know it."

"And it doesn't matter!" Mary snapped. Her smile was gone, replaced by the frustration she'd been hiding underneath. Everyone in this business was always frustrated. "You have your reasons for being involved; I have mine; Jared and Frank have theirs. We're all doing it, moral or not, so get on board, stop throwing a bloody hissy fit every time you get a new assignment, or eat the bloody consequences!"

Harry stared at her without unlocking his jaw. There was no witty retort to launch at her, no righteous sermon to jump into, because, much as he loathed it, she was right. He'd thought up a hundred ways to get out over the past two years, possibly a thousand, but when it came right down to it, they were nothing more than so many useless pipe dreams. Jared and Frank and the whole bloody lot of them had him right where they wanted, and he was stuck there, bloody fucking stuck like a dog on a leash, and he could whine as much as he liked, but everyone in the ring already knew that what they were doing was wrong; they just didn't care, or else, if they cared, they'd packed those thoughts tightly away in the least accessible pockets of their brains. Maybe a few of them were even like Harry. The whole lot, though, could put up with life in the gray zone as long as the Galleons kept coming. The money, undeniably, was good… or it would've been if each Knut didn't reek of the lint-coated addict's pocket that it came from.

Mary correctly interpreted Harry's silence as the reluctant acceptance that it was. "Alright then," she said, for the most part regaining her calm, a fainter version of the motherly smile returning to her lips, "The first shipment should be in this evening. Show up here roughly a half hour after sundown to pick it up, and for god sake, Harry, don't do anything righteously stupid; remember why you're involved in this."

Harry felt his mouth twitch, but he said nothing, acknowledging her statement only with a curt nod as he twisted back around to stomp out of this trunk-made prison. On his march back towards the castle, he could no longer smell the wood smoke, just the ever-present odor of dead leaves piled too deep, slowly decaying in their mass graves.

…

Hermione might've been overworked and vaguely dreading every class she'd have to teach that day, but she couldn't help the happy sigh that slipped from her lungs as she stepped into the dungeon. Her long-term potions projects were warm in comparison to the frosty morning air and tendrils of steam licked off of their smooth, lumpy, or multicolored surfaces to twine up the walls like exotic, sentient vines. She couldn't say it smelled good — it smelled like dog shit and breakfast cereal mostly — but to Hermione that was the smell of potential, of the infinite possibilities that hid in the pewter depths of an empty cauldron or the roiling mists of a half-cooked death draught. She loved it.

Allowing herself several minutes to wander among her works-in-progress, Hermione admired and sniffed and let the steam open her pores, the stench clear her head, before she settled behind her podium to review her notes for the upcoming lecture.

Thank the lord this was one of her 300-level classes; she couldn't handle the rote boredom of an intro course today.

When her first student arrived, the thin and milky skinned Mr. Harvey Turnville, Hermione dragged herself back into go-mode. He was the one with the atrocious grammar (his essays were like stomach ulcers to read), but his lab work was another story altogether.

"Morning, Professor G," he mumbled with an acknowledging nod as he settled his leather satchel carefully onto the tabletop. Most of her students settled things carefully onto the tabletops here; there were often stray salamander tongues lying about that they were keen to avoid... not to mention suspicious stains and burn marks. If the Ministry ever decided to come in and test the work surfaces for toxicity, Hermione highly doubted they'd pass. That was okay; she had a mean Confundus Charm, and if that didn't work she was sure her students had a few good hexes up their sleeves. It was with this line of thought that Hermione smiled vaguely back at her pupil, wishing she'd had stronger coffee, and returned to scanning her notes. A second bag and a third settled softly into place as the minutes ticked by, and neither time did she bother to look up, but when the fourth bag hit the floor with a decided whump, she figured it couldn't be a class regular. They all knew better.

Eyes sighing upwards, she prepared to tell off the freeloader. She allowed the occasional sit-in during her intro course, but never in either of the 300-levels that she taught, and she was sure this was explained in the course catalog. Inexperience was dangerous when messing with fire and hot metal and the temperamental gastric juices of a potion-in-the-works. It was a liability she couldn't risk when some of the more complicated draughts literally took _years_ to prepare.

"Excuse me," she said, still halfway living in her brain and unable to focus on the student or judge much of anything about him aside from the fact that he was tall (very tall) and wearing plaid. "I don't permit visitors this period. You can come back on Tuesday for my other class, if you'd like, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Oh, sorry," the student (an American) said in a voice that drawled a bit too much for her liking. She'd never been particularly fond of the American accent; it was naturally so dry that she always felt like they were being a bit insolent when they spoke to her, though she knew logically this wasn't true. From a series of lectures she'd done along the eastern seaboard, she'd become slightly familiarized with American dialects and so such, but she didn't recognize this student's, meaning he most likely wasn't from the east. She catalogued all this in her ever-spinning brain (simply because she couldn't turn off the synapses), and then dismissed it, while the plaid smudge of a student, unaware of any of Hermione's silent musings, continued, "I'm not visiting, though. I transferred from the American Academy of Witchcraft, and they put me in this class."

"Who put you in this class?" Hermione tried to focus her eyes. Where was his face? "Did you fulfill all the prerequisites at your previous school or did you test in?"

"Um…" the plaid smudge said, "I've fulfilled about half the pre-reqs, but officially I guess I tested in."

Apparently Hermione's neurons had better things to do than identify this guy because the image forming on her retinas was still that of a tall, blurry, red-and-brown-checkered popsicle stick. She squinted, aware that she was probably sending off less-than-welcoming, spinster vibes; Ron had always teased her about looking like a sourpuss when she squinted. Then again, who cared what Ron said; he looked like a sourpuss a lot of the time, too. "Come up here, please," Hermione said without missing a beat, all her thoughts easily contained, "I'd like to add you to my list."

Boots clopped on the flagstones as he scooted around the tables to her podium, and finally she managed to fight her lenses to shape properly for sight… which turned out to be a mistake. Agh.

Hermione was a thirty-two-year-old, highly intelligent, and fiercely independent woman, and she had never in her life considered herself "boy crazy," but the student who now stood only feet away from her podium was exactly her type. Until that very moment, she hadn't known she had a type… but she knew now.

He was a good several inches over six feet, and the rest of his body hadn't let that outdo it. It had noticed, and it had compensated accordingly. Hermione _had_ always liked tall. She hadn't known she'd had a thing for shoulders, though, and big hands (he had very nice hands), but that was something else to add to her recently created list of self-discoveries. While he had the stereotypical movie star jawline, the rest of his face was less conventional in its draw: eyes shaped more like those of little kids than adults, high cheekbones, tiny mouth.

Not that any of that mattered.

"I'm Professor Granger," Hermione told him, voice straight and trimmed. She glanced up matter-of-factly, a silent prompt for him to provide his own name.

"Hi," the student said with a one-sided smile. He had a dimple... because, of course, he had to have a dimple. "I'm Sam."

"We use last names here," she reminded him, smiling slightly to make up for the overly cool tone she'd used before. Anyhow, in American culture people were expected to smile more as a simple matter of common courtesy.

"Oh, right. Sorry." If she'd been looking at him, she would've noticed the embarrassed fidgeting of his hands, the apologetic quirk of his itsy-bitsy lips. "Sam Campbell."

"Mr. Campbell," she muttered, waving her wand in a lazy arc towards her bag. A quill popped out along with a tied scroll of parchment, which unwound itself and submitted to the quill's scribbling. "What year are you in?"

"I'm a sophomore."

Hermione nodded. "And do you have the textbook?" she pressed, as business-minded as ever as she flicked her gaze back up at him.

"Not yet," he said (and this time she did note the sheepishness). "I ordered it, but there've been a few... hold ups, I think."

"That's fine. Let me know if it doesn't arrive within the next week. As is, you'll just have to make friends quickly so that you can complete reading assignments." She doubted that would be a large problem. "The rest of the materials, lucky us, are supplied by the school this year. We received a rather generous donation from Mr. Draco Malfoy."

Sam Campbell's eyes hazed for a minute before brightening to a light hazel, and his mouth opened in awe. "You're not _Hermione_ Granger, are you?" he asked, "From the whole thing with Voldemort?"

"Um… yes," Hermione said. She always blushed when people recognized her (it had nothing to do with Sam being exceptionally attractive), and she hated it. "I am that... Yes." Dying to move on to topics where she could properly articulate herself, Hermione cut it off there and said in a rush, "More importantly, though, I'm your potion's professor. I'm glad to have you in my class, Mr. Campbell; now please return to your seat so I can start today's lecture."

Still blushing, loathing both herself and Sam Campbell for it, she watched as he nodded and retraced his steps to the chemically compromised table he'd come from. Then she zeroed her eyes onto her notes, erased any and all students from her mind, and let her frontal lobe inundate itself instead with the subtle, dark, and twisted ways of potion-brewing.

Lost in her love of the art as she dove deeper into the lecture (and never having been particularly self-conscious), Hermione didn't notice that with every line she spoke, every word she wrote, every connection she drew and technique she demonstrated, a new spark lit in the irises of her most recently acquired student, until there weren't individual sparks at all but just a single, steady glow of admiration.

Hermione had some inkling of her own brilliance, but she'd never really understood how it affected other people. Maybe if she had, she would've been able to avoid the pit she was about to fall into.

…

Dean didn't get nervous; what he was, as he paced back and forth in the tiny tower room, was _concerned_. After all, what if his roommate was one of those dumbass bastards who thought all muggles were like little yappy dogs to stroke and coddle? Or what if he was all rah-rah purebloods? 'Cause that'd suck. In fact, Dean wasn't a big fan of the whole roommate thing in general; he preferred to think of himself as a lone wolf, and an extra dude made it a lot harder to get some alone time with the ladies… of which Dean planned to have many.

Then again, the room itself wasn't so bad. Much nicer than a lotta the motels he'd grown up in. There was one austere window cut into the stone slabs of the castle wall, and the light was more grayish than yellow, but a fat, rag rug hugged the floor like an old friend, and the mattresses were thick and stuffed so full of down that Dean thought they might be about to puke, so, yeah… definitely still homier than a lotta places Dean had called home. He'd make it work. Unless, he thought, wrinkling his nose at the sudden realization, what if his roommate had a pet? Or, maybe worse, what if he was a herbology freak and insisted on keeping five fucking Venomous Tentaculas under his bed?

"It's Tentacul_ae_."

Dean crimped his neck as he snapped it towards the doorway, and so the first expression he made at the guy he'd be sharing his sleeping quarters with for the next eight months was an unhappy scowl. It didn't matter, though, because as it turned out, Dean already knew the guy. He rubbed at his neck and continued to scowl.

The tall American who was slouched in the doorway shrugged with a vaguely amused smile. "Just basic Latin. You know."

"Yeah. Thanks for the lesson," Dean growled, "I thought you weren't gonna go mining in my head? Not that there's not gold up there, but…"

"Well," Sam smirked, slumping into the room and dropping onto his bed, "Look at my side of it here. I was walking up the stairs, minding my own business just like any day, and then I sense this thought cloud floating about in my room. Now, I know I don't have a roommate, and H.U.M.M. doesn't exactly employ dorm cleaners, so naturally, my suspicions were provoked and I had to do some mental snooping to work out whether or not I was gonna have to kick somebody's ass." He tugged his shoes off and glanced up at Dean. "So… what _are_ you doing here?"

"Going through your sock drawer," Dean snorted.

Sam's eyes widened in surprise. "Really? I mean... I guess I have socks to spare, but—"

"No, dumbass! I'm your new roommate."

"Huh," said Sam, eyes slipping shut, "Well, I'm tired."

"Gotta say, you really know how to make a guy feel welcome."

"Welcome," Sam hummed as he lay back to stretch out on the bed and stare up at the ceiling.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Oh, I bet people _love_ you at parties."

"Mmm… I don't go to parties."

"What?" Dean gaped, sinking onto his own mattress. (He'd been right; goose down was the shit). "Man, that is gonna have to change now that you're _my_ roommate. That'd be sad even if you weren't twenty-one."

The guy snorted a laugh at that. "Dude, I got here, like, the same time you did; I haven't exactly had a chance to take names. Plus, college is hard if you haven't noticed. And I'm _not_ twenty-one. This is England, though; is that even the drinking age?"

"Does anyone care?" Dean shrugged, wrinkling his nose, "Anyway, how old _are_ you? You take, like, growth hormones or something? 'Cause, dude, you know that shit messes with your body chemistry, right?"

Sam didn't laugh, but the corners of his mouth stretched in a way that made Dean think he'd come close. "I'm nineteen," the giant said, "and, no—" He gestured down his body. "—this is all pure, Kansas-grown goodness."

"Freak." Dean kicked off his own boots and unzipped his bag in one, rough tug before clawing through it and tossing things onto the floor (step one of moving in). As he tossed, he talked. "I'm making you go to parties anyway," he warned, "I can't have people saying, 'Wow, there goes the kick-ass Dean Winchester guy who I'd totally wanna go talk to except, oh look, he's with that lame roommate of his who we can't risk associating with for fear of losing all social status ever.'"

Sam let his head fall lazily to the side so that his nose was pointing towards Dean. One eyebrow and one corner of his mouth were crooked upwards. "H.U.M.M. has a pretty selective admissions process," he said, "'Cool' doesn't equal 'party animal' here."

"Right. 'Cause obviously the guy who's been here for two days has total authority to say that."

"Says the other guy who's been here two days," Sam mumbled, bringing his hands to cover his face. "Can't we both just be losers for a month or two until you work out the social structure and drag my reluctant ass to the top during your disgusting grab for power?"

"Better, how 'bout I leave your reluctant ass here in this dump."

"Mmh," Sam smiled. Evidently, the hands hadn't blocked out enough of the world because he flipped over to press his face into the pillow as he said, "Sounds good. Hey. Why'd you transfer anyway?" voice now muffled by the pounds of feathers it had to work through.

"What?"

"It's, like, two weeks into the semester. Why'd you transfer?"

"I didn't," Dean grunted, "I wasn't going to college back in the states."

"Working?"

"Yeah. Business that my dad and I run. We get rid of dangerous magical artifacts and monsters and whatnot for all the idiots out there who wouldn't know what magic was if it up and bit 'em in the ass."

"Cool."

"Cool until you're twenty-three and realize you're still living with your damn dad! Yeah. Other than that, totally cool, but the old man and I decided it was time for a little family intervention."

"So you came here?"

"So I _got shipped_ here. Nobody told me 'apart time' meant another fucking continent."

Sam snorted out a down-muted laugh. Dean liked making people laugh in general, but for some reason Sam's laugh made him feel like he'd said something extra witty (which wasn't really true), but he couldn't pretend he was opposed to the feeling. It was dumb, but whatever. He was a funny guy.

"Family drama," Sam nodded, still muffling his words with the damn pillow, "That's kinda why I'm here, too."

"Oh yeah? What happened?"

"Uh… my mom had cancer," he said, "I mean, she'd had it for a while, so it wasn't really a surprise when she died, but… you know. Anyway, family was really important to her, and she wanted me to come over here to be with the remaining relatives. My great aunt lives in England, and my cousin's a T.A. in the Herbology Department here." As if realizing that this was still too heavy for Dean to comfortably comment on, he added, "He's named Neville, and he probably _does_ have five Venomous Tentaculae under his bed, just to put you on your guard."

"Pervert," Dean grumbled.

"What? Me or Neville?"

"You. I keep forgetting that you can creep around in my brain." Dean shuddered as he plucked a particularly foul sock from the bowels of his duffel. "That's some freaky crap, man."

"_You're_ freaky crap," Sam mumbled, "I'm tired."

Dean snorted. "Can't even come up with a decent comeback? Score one for Dean; score zero for the pervert." He held up his hand in a perfect O.

"I'm tired," Sam mumbled again, as if this was a passable excuse for all his flaws.

"Fine," Dean said, flinging the last offending article of clothing onto the heap he'd constructed on the ground. "I'm gonna go hunt down that Percy Weasley dude to switch me out of goddamn Divination, and then I'm gonna find me some pie. You can get your beauty sleep."

He grunted to a standing position and headed for the door. The last thing he heard as he tromped over the threshold was a blurry, "Mmm… pie."

An uninvited smile quirked the corner of Dean's mouth. Mmm… pie indeed. Maybe he wouldn't transfer out of Divination after all.

…

Ron slouched in an armchair with the hollow core of uselessness drilling through his limbs. He supposed he'd been more or less useless for a while now, but back in his one-bed, no-bath flat, that had been the status quo; he'd learned to ignore it. His return to H.U.M.M. had somehow re-awoken those old pains, probably because he wasn't surrounded by other losers anymore. Much as he'd loved Joan, his drunken landlady, and Benjamin, the other unemployed slacker who rented the room across the hall, they couldn't compare to the purposeful activity of one of the world's most prestigious research universities. Back when he'd attended, everybody had always seemed to be doing something exciting and urgent, and as far as Ron could see that hadn't changed.

Hermione spent all day teaching, grading, eating, meeting people, walking from one place to another, answering mail — she even slept with a bloody purpose! — and Harry seemed busy, too, though Merlin only knew what with. He'd been in and out all yesterday, and when he was in, he'd torn into heavy books of some sort while his wand and his quill wrote feverishly, churning out page after page of illegible rubbish (at least, from Ron's distant vantage point it appeared to be illegible rubbish; no doubt in reality it was yet another matter of life or death in which Ron had no part).

Even when the two of them had been gone and it was just Ron slumping around Hermione's cozy, soundproofed chambers, he still felt like the only bum in the castle. He didn't dare to set foot outside in the hallways, but he imagined he could hear the distant buzz and rumble of thousands of walking, talking, breathing, bumbling and _busy_ university students. For the first time in his life, Ron wished he were busy. Well, somewhat busy. He still wasn't keen on getting off his bum and going out into the real, ball-crushing world of the job market, but he bloody well needed to do _something_!

And then, like flashfloods in the desert, enlightenment struck. He thought he'd considered all housework possibilities yesterday, but, even in the heart of a prestigious university, the possibility that he could _learn_ to be helpful hadn't occurred to him. It did now. He could get busy, lower the dial on everybody's stress meter, and maybe take a step forward in the grand Hermione Plan with a single, wand-stopping blow!

He would learn to cook.

All he needed was to go dig up a house elf and get it to show him the basic moves. If he could work up the guts to mail his mum, maybe he could beg a few cookbooks off her… But, then again, maybe not yet. A house elf was better.

Of course, Hermione could never find out or she'd give him her stern, professor look (the one that they taught all professors in Fine-Points-of-Disapproval School) and start in on the age-worn lecture about exploitation of ignorance. But Ron didn't buy that drivel. The little buggers knew full well what they were doing, and, with the odd exception or two, they loved it with all the fire in their tiny hearts. Not something Ron could relate to. As far as he was concerned, they were all a little off in the head, but if picking lint off blankets and scouring the grout was the highlight of their week, who was he to argue?

As long as Hermione didn't go interrogating the kitchen staff, it would all go down as smoothly as Felix Felicis.

The only real hitch in the plan was that Ron somehow had to get to the kitchens and back without being seen. He wasn't on the "Top 40 Under 40" list like Harry, but he still got recognized a fair bit, and the last thing he needed right now was a rumor going around the castle that Ron Weasley was back at Hogwarts; the trail of crumbs would lead straight back to Hermione, and he'd promised not to jeopardize her job.

Harry, lucky bastard, could pull off a glamour — a pretty bloody good one if Ron was anyone to judge (though he wasn't really) — but Ron had never gotten around to taking those 300-level DADA and TRA courses. The most he could do was turn his eyebrows blue; and that was about as useful as nipples on a Skrewt. However, magically impaired as he might be, his memory worked just fine, and he clearly remembered many a fantastic night spent loafing around the grounds under a certain invisibility cloak. Ron couldn't be certain Harry'd brought it with him, but there was no reason not to look (except, of course, that it was snooping, and Harry probably wouldn't like it), but Harry could shove it. Not like he needed the thing when he had a glamour. So, with a few guilty glances at the armchairs and bookshelves (which frowned back at him and threatened to tattle), he padded over to Harry's rucksack and flipped the lid.

He located the cloak easily enough, bunched up small and shoved into a woolen winter hat that Ron couldn't imagine Harry had ever actually worn given how hideous the thing was. He shook it out and dropped the hat back into Harry's trunk, knocking over an old glasses case in the process. With a sigh, Ron tossed the cloak onto the nearest chair and crouched down to put everything back where he'd found it. He snatched up the glasses case, the faux leather smooth and cool against his hot palm, and was surprised to hear papers rustling. He frowned down into the trunk, but there was no parchment stacked where the case had been, just clothes and Harry's archaic toiletry bag. Frown burrowing deeper into the lines around his mouth, Ron gave the case a little shake, and, sure enough, there was the bloody paper noise again.

There was no excuse for what he did next — it was snooping no matter how you looked at it — but Harry was his friend, and Ron was curious, and so, sweeping the room one final time with guilt-bright eyes, he snapped the case open and looked inside.


	5. Chapter 4: Secrets & Subordination

CHAPTER 4: SECRETS &amp; SUBORDINATION  


It appeared to be empty, nothing but a cream fabric lining inside, and a poke—first with his finger, then with his wand—revealed the bottom to be solid as well. Ron acknowledged the iffy status of his deductive powers, but he'd lived in the magical world long enough to know that the look and feel of a thing meant next to nothing, and he'd lived with Harry long enough to know he didn't keep his glasses in a case, which meant it was charmed.

Ron stole another look at the uptight expressions of the chairs and rugs. They'd evidently absorbed Hermione-ness by living in close quarters with her for so long, and Ron shuddered to think how Hermione's face would look if she caught him like this.

He hesitated, then prodded his wand into the case again and muttered, "Revelio."

Nothing happened. Ron supposed he should've expected that. Harry was an auror; if he really wanted to keep something hidden, a second-rate wizard like Ron wasn't going to be able to get at it.

Nothing new there. Harry'd been doing important, secretive things for a decade now, and he never told Ron anything about it. And sure, objectively Ron understood that he probably had orders to keep his trap shut, but neither he nor Harry had ever followed the rules back in the old days. Mates shared things; fuck the system.

Ron tossed the glasses case back into Harry's trunk with a glare. Then he thought better of it and rearranged all the items as they had been prior to his intrusion. He shut the trunk, slapped the numbness out of his knees, and then scooped the invisibility cloak off the kitchen chair where he'd tossed it earlier.

Operation Sneak had failed, but Operation House Elf might still be a win.

Ron gave the trunk a last, dark look, and then tucked the cloak around himself, creaking out the door into the hallway.

He figured the kitchen would still be in the same place it had ten years ago. Though progressive in some respects, H.U.M.M. had a decidedly obstinate streak when it came to renovations. The Alumni Association fought hard to keep everything exactly the same. One stone out of place and people like Draco Malfoy would throw a bloody tantrum. It had been in the paper a while back that a student had gone missing after the man-eating moss that thrived on the roof of the astronomy tower had chewed its way through the shingles to the castle's interior. The Alumni Association had threatened to cut funding to H.U.M.M. Grounds Management if the roof was replaced, or, in fact, if the moss was touched at all, and Malfoy, when asked what he proposed the school do instead, had said, "Put up a sign," which, to the cynical amusement of the masses, is exactly what they did.

Ron still got the gold-lined envelopes in the mail every year, inviting him to join the Association in opulent cursive letters and words longer than his— Well, best not. He took great pleasure pinning them to the wall and seeing how close he had to get before he could peg them with an Incendio spell. Benjamin had joined in one year, and he'd been impressed at Ron's range — a record 124 paces.

Of course, had he recognized Ron as the third member of the Golden Trio, he probably would have been less impressed.

Reaching one of the main hallways, Ron was called abruptly back from memory lane when he nearly got bowled over by a speed-walker in a leather jacket. He had to jump out of the way to avoid getting stepped on, whacking his elbow on the corridor wall in the process, which hurt much more than it had any right to. Scowling at the back of the speed-walker's head, Ron rubbed his bruised arm and stepped more carefully back into the flow of student traffic. From then on, he paid close attention to his surroundings as he wound down the castle's halls to the giant pear painting that marked the entrance to the kitchens.

The pear was as fat-bellied and chartreuse as ever, and Ron had no particular desire to tickle it, but he did, and the portrait swung open to reveal the smoldering ovens, roaring stovetops and impeccably scrubbed floors of the Hogwarts kitchens. That a school this size only had one kitchen and one dining hall was pure lunacy, but the Alumni Association would fight it tooth and nail if the administration ever decided to take pity on the students and add another. Merlin forbid the suffering stop. The rumble of a thousand student stomachs was as much an iconic element of the hallway echoes as the clanking of the living suits of armor.

The smell of something burning put a stop to the cynical spiral of Ron's thoughts. Weren't the house elves supposed to be good at cooking? Frowning, he located the top of the smoke plume and followed it back down to a frying pan of kippers and the house elf beside it, who was frozen on his step stool, staring at Ron.

Ron had never liked the way house elves stared, and this one had a particular neon gaze that reminded Ron of some experiences at equally neon muggle night clubs he'd rather forget.

He scowled at the elf. "Your kippers are burning, mate."

The elf jumped, dropped its spatula, and barely managed to stay standing on the stool. "My humblest apologies, sir," it squeaked as it clambered off its perch to retrieve the utensil.

Ron strode over and put out the stove fire with his wand to prevent the poor kippers from charring any further. Though he supposed it served them right. Kippers were one of the only foods that disgusted him.

The house elf was now at the sink, meticulously scrubbing the fallen spatula with its fingernails, which was also rather disgusting.

"Where are the rest of you at?" Ron demanded.

The elf dropped the spatula again.

"They hid, sir," it said as it stumbled back down the stool's steps. "They do not like strangers in the kitchen. It is disruptive to the work environment, and we work hard to keep the work environment comfortable for all elves."

"Oh," said Ron, who was not used to elves taking any sort of stand. "Sorry, mate. Didn't mean to dampen your synergy. I'm just here to see if one of you has time to give me cooking lessons."

The elf, now back on its stool, recommenced scrubbing the spatula. "I am sorry if it inconveniences you, sir," it said, "but we are all very busy with Hogwarts work."

"I see," said Ron, wishing he could speak with a more accommodating elf. "Do you think I could… help you out, maybe? If you show me how, I'll cook whatever you want. Extra pair of hands, you know?"

The house elf blinked at him with its creepy, neon stare, but it managed to keep ahold of its spatula this time.

"Work in the kitchens?" it repeated, voice pitched even higher than usual.

"Yeah. Just for a couple weeks. Learn my way around."

The elf's eyes turned suspicious. "You don't work with the Freedom Project, do you? We don't want any of your clothes. House work is a pride and an honor and—"

"I'm not with the Freedom Project," Ron assured him. "Never heard of it. I just want to learn to cook."

The elf continued to eye him as though he might be hiding a scarf down his trouser leg, waiting for the opportune moment to attack. "Alright," it allowed at last. "I'll have to see what the others think. Wait outside please."

It hopped off its stool with the wet spatula and began waving Ron towards the portrait hole.

Ron, who had no desire to get wet, did as requested and hunched next to the pear painting under the cloak. It was a long ten minutes (which Ron mostly spent scowling at the water spots the elf's spatula-waving had left on his shirt) before the portrait hole reopened.

"We have made our decision," declared the elf.

Ron had gotten rejected from a thousand positions in his life, but never from an unpaid one that didn't even require a degree. If he started getting turned down from those too…

"We will take you on."

Ron let out a sigh of relief before he caught himself and remembered to look cool. "Thanks, mate," he said.

"We are short on the morning shift, which starts at five and ends at one. You will be expected to arrive on time— no, early!" the elf exclaimed with a stern expression, which had little effect on Ron, used to the stern expressions of Hermione, Hogwarts Professors, employers and landlords. "And you will follow all instructions."

"Sure. Within reason, you know," Ron nodded. "Starting tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yes," the elf confirmed. "My name is Knobbs. How do you wish for us to refer to your most esteemed personage?"

Just when Ron was beginning to get a handle on the guy. Esteemed personage. "Lord Wease should do fine," he said.

The elf bowed. "Very good, Lord Wease. Then I shall be seeing you at 4:50 tomorrow. Have a good day."

Ron supposed sarcasm didn't really exist in elf culture. "Yeah, you too, mate," he said, and waved as he exited the portrait hole. Lord Wease it was then. Maybe he should've picked something more flattering.

* * *

Auror Amadou Fokobo frowned at the toxicology report that had just come in. The witch who'd administered the tests was named Listra Chaff, and the loopy 'L' in her signature was covering part of the last line of text. Amadou hated that.

"Ashworth," he called as he continued to skim through the lilac-scented document, "Get me _The Register of Magical Drugs_, Volumes 87 through 94."

Abigail Ashworth spun her chair about as if electrocuted. "Right now?"

Amadou met her eyes over the top of the sheet. "Is what you're doing so important that it can't be interrupted?"

"I guess not."

He recommenced his reading. "Then yes. Right now."

A telltale scraping noise grated against Amadou's ears as several things on Abigail's desk scuffed back into their original positions. He didn't look up to see, but he knew they'd left marks in the wood.

"Lift please."

"What?"

"When you put things away, don't slide; lift. You're damaging the desk."

"I can fix it."

"How about you try not damaging it in the first place."

"Yes, Mr. Fokobo."

"Please call me Fokie." He flipped to the second page of Ms. Chaff's report. "I hate the name Fokobo."

"Yes, Mr. Fokobo."

Amadou closed his eyes until Ashworth was gone. He could confund Chutro for assigning him a mentee; the man knew how low his tolerance was, and yet he always chose to provoke him.

"Here they are, Mr. Fokobo."

"Fokie." Rather than accepting the stack of green-bound journals she was holding out, he flicked his wand and sent them flying through the air to hover in an arc in front of him. "Thank you; that's all."

Abigail nodded quickly several times, the motion popping several of her curls loose from their bun, before returning to her desk. Then there was another obtrusive scuff as her materials slid back into place.

"Lift," Amadou told her before waving his wand again to send the pages fluttering as they cross-referenced themselves against the toxicology report. It took just under two minutes to find a match. The other journals restacked themselves while Fokie plucked Volume 93 out of the air and scanned the page at which it had frozen. "Ashworth," he said, "Look up Frank Devereaux for me, please."

"Right now?"

"Since we've already established that you're not doing anything important, I'd say yes, right now would be lovely."

Ashworth blinked at him dumbly (though he was sure she'd caught on to his impatience), then used the arms of her chair to lever herself upright. "Would you like me to take _The Register of Magical Drugs_ back, too?"

"Yes. Might as well make it one trip."

If he'd been looking at her then, he would've seen her mouth quirk. "Not that you won't be sending me on another in ten minutes."

Amadou glanced up with hoisted brows, but the girl had already turned away and begun the long trot down the hallway to the records room.

It was not until an hour later that Amadou finally waved all his files aside and sat down in his seldom-used office chair. The thing was three years old and still smelled like the muggle shop it had come from.

"Ashworth, it looks like we have our first field assignment."

She spun immediately, and Amadou considered with dry amusement that this was the first time he'd gotten such a prompt response from the girl. "Really?" she asked.

"Really. An old case has reopened, and I'd like to see to it personally this time." He steepled the tips of his fingers. "Have you heard of Frank Devereaux?"

"Excluding thirty minutes ago when you asked me to look him up, no. Who is he?"

"He's a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but he manages alright for himself considering. Two years ago, we caught him making pills — the illegal, magical kind — and we sent an auror, the one you Brits all love—" Amadou swirled his hand absently through the air. "—What's-his-name, the one with the scar."

"Harry Potter?" Abigail asked, tone almost scathing, though her eyes had widened.

Amadou did not understand why everyone in London expected him to keep track of their celebrities. "That one," he said. "I reported the pattern I'd discovered in the toxicology, and they sent Mr. Potter to sort it out. He went undercover and discovered the creator of the pills, this Frank Devereaux, but he suggested we wait to bring him in because he suspected that he was part of a larger drug ring. He did, in fact, find evidence of a ring, but the leaders got wind of the investigation and fled the country. If they're back, then I want to see it through myself this time. Unfortunately, I fear we'll have to begin by speaking to this Mr. Potter. His paperwork on the case was not done to the level of detail I would like."

"We're going to talk to Harry Potter?"

"That is what I said, yes."

"When?"

"Well, as soon as possible. I sent out an owl just a minute ago telling him to floo here. Schedules permitting, we should be seeing him sometime this afternoon."

Abigail's hands flew to her hair as if to hold the stray curls in place. "My God," she said, "We're going to meet Harry Potter."

But three hours later, they still hadn't heard back. Two rolled around, and then three, four, and at five an envelope floated in, which Ashworth plucked from the air after glancing at Amadou to confirm he wasn't going to do it himself.

"It's from PM." (PM was the commonly used shorthand for Personnel Management around the office.)

"Who specifically?"

"Limmings."

"Open it."

Abigail opened the letter to read, and Amadou watched as her eyebrows grew lower and closer together with each line they traversed. "The letter bounced," she said, "The one you sent to Harry Potter. Limmings says—"

Amadou summoned the letter.

_Fokie, you know you're supposed to talk to me before mailing the in-field aurors_, it began in Limmings's tight scrawl, _and contacting Potter is particularly problematic at the moment. Not only is he undercover, but he hasn't switched over to our new check-in system. We sent a notice to the safe house he was staying at last month about the new system, but he hasn't yet sent us his confirmation, and he missed the new check-in date. I'm sure you understand the implications. Given that his current mission is an offshoot of the one your letter addressed, I think you might be interested in communicating with the investigation team. I'm just putting it together now, so when I know who's heading it, I'll put you in contact. –Jack Limmings_

Amadou vanished the letter and stood.

"Are you going to talk to PM?" Ashworth asked.

"Yes. You should go pack."

"PM gave you the investigation?"

"No," Amadou said as he reached the door, "but they're about to."


End file.
